Re: Look and Feel

[Graham J Lee]

On 13 Feb 2005, at 11:56, Randi Joseph wrote:

> > > Apple spends millions of dollars getting its interface right. Even 
> > > Steve Jobs who manages to force a single button mouse down our 
> > > throats realized that an made the change.
>
> > If you mean that Apple has changed to have a two button mouse, I'm 
> > glad to hear it ... I resent the single button on my apple laptop.
>
> "...manages to...".  i knew that sentence was a problem after i sent 
> it. i was referring to the scrollbars :-)
>
> As far as good ideas/decisions go,  maintaining the right scrollbar 
> and the main menubar was smart. I think they should have offered 
> nextstep users an option, but thats not apple's  tendency.

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSInterfaceStyle nextstep
disappeared after OS X Server 1 :-(

> I believe that if the left handed scrollbar was easy to get accustomed 
> to, steve would have left it that way.

Perhaps; I think this shows the 'right-hand scrollbar' to be - now, 
anyway - an historical artefact.  An ergonomicist may find an argument 
to say that the left-hand path is better, but if you're used to right 
then right is better.  More Apple users are used to RH scrollbars than 
LH.

> the users that GNUSTEP is trying to woo is no diffent from the apple 
> crowd. they will balk.

I agree with RFM on this one - some people prefer certain UI decisions, 
others prefer others.  If the software can be written in such a way to 
offer a genuine choice, then more people are satisfied.  There isn't 
(IMHO, IANAJR[*]) an objectively "good" user interfaces, just a lot of 
subjectively good ones.  Some people like the NeXT way, some people 
like the Mac way, some people are accustomed to the Windows way.  I 
like bits of the NeXT, Mac and X interfaces, for example.  Some people 
would even eschew the mouse completely and happily run their Canon Cat. 
 In my opinion the best user interface would be one with documented and 
easily-accessible flexibility; the default style need then be the only 
thing everyone jihads on ;-)

[*]I Am Not A Jef Raskin

Cheers,
--
Graham Lee                       GPG Key ID: 01D5B9D8
UNIX Systems Manager, Oxford Physics Practical Course
Coordinator, UKUUG Apple SIG (apple-sig-request@lists.ukuug.org)
Technical bod, Oxford Mac Users' Group (http://www.oxmug.org)